Exclusive: Michael Rymer on 17th Precinct
Source: Scott Huver
February 11, 2011
Michael Rymer's going from Cylons to sorcery: the "Battlestar Galactica" producer-director gave ComingSoon.net the exclusive scoop on reteaming with "BSG" creator Ron Moore to helm the pilot of a new supernatural police procedural series.
"I'm actually about to start directing a pilot that's written by Ron Moore called '17th Precinct,'" Rymer told us at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. "It's for NBC and we're in the process of casting it right now. It's bigger than 'Ben Hur,' very wild. It's a procedural set in a world where science is replaced by magic."
"Theres a lot of FX work," explained Rymer. "I'm very excited because it's going to be a real challenge to figure out how to explain why something is magical and not technological. There are some real challenges, but this is a very good script. It's Ron's main forte, which was very well demonstrated by 'Battlestar Galactica.' This is a great storyteller and just a lot of creative characters. We've had wonderful characters. So you get great actors and the writers will see what the actors are doing and they'd feed off of each other and there was this fantastic dialectic going on."
Rymer says there are no plans yet for him to direct any episodes of the upcoming sequel series "Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome," but he considers his stint on "BSG" a high point in his career.
"I was the pilot director and a producing director," he said. "I directed about 25 of the episodes over the course of the season. That was sort of the first time in my directing career where I went, 'This is how it's supposed to be. Everyone gets on, is respectful, collaborative.' It just worked. Everybody fed off of everybody else in a very productive way."
